The Death of Shisui

"Lord Danzo, is there something you need? The memorial gathering is about to begin, and I must be on my way," Uchiha Shisui said, looking at Danzo.

"Are you certain your Kotoamatsukami can quell this Uchiha coup? Someone as suspicious as I am won't take your word for it, so you had better hand over your eyes," Danzo replied, his hand lunging toward Shisui's right eye.

"This—" Shisui activated his Sharingan, instantly freezing Danzo in place; clearly, he had been prepared.

"Lord Danzo, that is a standard genjutsu. It will release on its own in a moment," Shisui said, turning to leave.

Just then, Danzo's fist slammed into Shisui's abdomen, and after landing several more blows to his face with his other hand, he swiftly gouged out Shisui's right eye.

Shisui retreated to a distance, dropping to one knee as he clutched his right eye, the searing pain snapping him back to reality.

Danzo's sequence of moves had been incredibly rapid: a heavy blow to the gut, three strikes to the face from different angles, then grabbing Shisui by the hair to hoist him up before deftly plucking out his eye. The entire maneuver was executed in one fluid motion, leaving Shisui stunned.

The main issue was that Shisui had never expected Danzo to resist his genjutsu, and he had been caught completely off guard.

Danzo unwrapped the white bandage from his right eye, revealing a Sharingan beneath. However, the eye immediately turned dull and sightless; clearly, he had used the forbidden technique Izanagi to catch Shisui by surprise.

"A Sharingan," Shisui's pupils contracted at the sight. Meanwhile, Danzo replaced his own eye with the stolen Sharingan, and several of his subordinates appeared in the surrounding area.

"Give me the other one as well," Danzo said in a low voice.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!" Shisui, refusing to sit and wait for death, immediately unleashed the Uchiha clan's signature fire jutsu.

"Water Style: Water Severing Wave!" Danzo's subordinates combined their efforts to counter the fire, the water evaporating instantly into a massive, billowing cloud of steam.

When the steam cleared, Uchiha Shisui was nowhere to be seen.

"Body Flicker Technique? Pursue him!" Danzo commanded, and the group gave chase.

Elsewhere, Uchiha Itachi waited behind a large boulder, seemingly expecting someone.

"Is that you, Shisui?" Itachi asked quickly upon hearing movement; he had been waiting here as they had previously agreed.

"Follow me," Shisui said without looking back, sprinting forward until they reached the edge of a cliff.

"Danzo took my right eye, and they are still hunting me. I don't want them to take the left one as well, so I am leaving it in your care. Please, protect the village for me," Shisui said with a calm expression before reaching up to gouge out his own left eye.

"Shisui, you...?" Itachi asked, a sense of unease gripping his heart.

"Take it. Danzo isn't entirely in the wrong; he acts to protect the village. I have already written my suicide note. If I am gone, they should abandon their plans for a coup," Itachi accepted the left eye with a heavy heart, listening as Shisui continued.

Shisui was the pillar of the Uchiha clan; his death, combined with that letter, would surely force the radicals to abandon their coup for the time being.

"Itachi, I leave the protection of the village to you," Shisui said, walking to the edge of the cliff.

"Shisui!" Itachi called out, reaching out to grab his arm.

"Itachi, as my friend, I hope you won't stop me. You understand me, don't you?" With that, Shisui resolutely jumped off the cliff.

"Itachi, protect the village for me," Shisui said with a smile, appearing to find release in that final moment.

The instant Shisui fell to his death, Uchiha Itachi awakened the Mangekyou Sharingan.

"Itachi, why are you only arriving now?" Uchiha Fugaku asked with some dissatisfaction, having already given Itachi instructions earlier. He felt helpless regarding this son; though his talent was beyond reproach, the older he got, the more they seemed to clash.

"Shisui has committed suicide. This is the letter he asked me to give to you," Itachi said calmly, tossing the suicide note toward him.

"What? You say Shisui committed suicide?" Fugaku asked in disbelief, thinking he had misheard.

"Yes," the group turned pale at Itachi's definitive answer.

"Itachi, what exactly is going on here?" a nearby elder demanded sternly.

"He explained everything in the letter. See for yourselves," Itachi said, turning and walking away without a backward glance. The others crowded around to read the letter, no one paying any mind to his departure.

While Shisui was being hunted and these events were unfolding within the Uchiha clan, Hyuga Gen was in Hyuga Natsu's room, telling her a story.

After wandering around yesterday, Dongyi realized the clothing here was quite conservative; items like hot pants or miniskirts were almost non-existent. There were skirts, of course, but the hems were long, the shortest barely reaching above the knee. To his surprise, however, there were qipaos.

There were maid outfits but no sailor uniforms, and a lack of various stockings, which Dongyi found a bit of a pity—he had actually wanted to see some stockings.

He had spent half the day shopping and bought quite a few things. Thinking of Xia's mother, Hyuga Mikoto, he had asked Xia to help pick out two sets as a gift; it was always good to curry favor with a future mother-in-law.

Today, Mikoto had asked Dongyi to stay for dinner, and as he prepared to leave afterward, Xia had pulled him into her room and asked him to tell her a story.

Xia lay on the bed, swinging her legs, her chin resting in her palms as she listened intently to Dongyi tell the story of a monkey.

Dongyi, however, was somewhat distracted, his attention pulled elsewhere. If one looked closely, they would see his gaze drifting along with the movement of Xia's snow-white feet.

"Brother Dongyi, that monkey can travel a hundred and eight thousand li in a single somersault—it's truly amazing. If I could do that, it would be wonderful," Xia said with a hint of envy.

"Why do you say that?" Dongyi asked.

"Then I could go everywhere and see everything. It would be so convenient; I really want to travel," Xia said, filled with longing.

"Once the world is at peace, I'll take you to visit all sorts of places and have some fun," Dongyi said earnestly.

"Really? I'm going to hold you to that," Xia said happily, though she soon thought of something and grew despondent. "But will there ever really be peace? How long would that take?" She knew that ever since the ninja villages were established, there had been nothing but constant war.

"There will be. In twenty years at most," Dongyi knew that after the Fourth Great Ninja War, the ninja world would find peace, and the five great nations would grow closer—that would be the peace of the world.

Just as Xia was about to speak, Mikoto's voice drifted in from outside, urging Dongyi to leave, as it was getting late.

"Oh, and Brother Dongyi? Next time, don't just stare at my feet. If you want to touch them, just do it. It's not like you haven't before; I don't mind," Xia said suddenly before Dongyi left the room.

Dongyi fled in a panic. They had indeed touched feet when they bathed together—was that when they were five or six?